He said Sommer's willingness to accept bitcoin could open the home to a global audience.

"If you increase awareness of potential buyers, you could tap into new markets," Tosh said.

Sommer has put a lot of work into the home in the posh Spanish Trail Country Club. It features marble from China, Iceland and Brazil, a full basement, staff quarters with Jacuzzis, and a secret garden. It also has 39 air conditioning zones fed from a 120-ton cooling tower.

Library shelves are stainless steel clad in American cherry wood, and the view from the owner's suite is of golf course fairways.

Sommer once owned the Aladdin resort, which is now the Planet Hollywood Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

He said he and his wife, Laura, considered the additions they've made to the home "an exercise in how many cool details we could put in." He said they were downsizing now that their seven children have grown and moved out.

Sommer's sales agent, Craig Tann, of Prudential American Group's Estates of Las Vegas team, said the home may be the first in southern Nevada to be marketed formally around bitcoin.

A range of businesses accept the currency. A California Lamborghini dealership sold a $103,000 Tesla to a Florida man for 91.4 bitcoin, the Review-Journal reported, and a Canadian man listed his Alberta home for the bitcoin equivalent of $405,000.

The currency hit a watermark when Bank of America Merrill Lynch said this month that one bitcoin could have a maximum value of $1,300, or more than the price of an ounce of gold.

A bitcoin on Friday was valued at about $870, up from $10 in January.

Tosh acknowledged the volatility in value could make a $7.85 million bitcoin trade risky.

"Locking in a price for such a large transaction is going to be kind of difficult," he said. "If the value is changing 30 percent a day, how do you quantify that in a contract and expect each side to hold on for 30 to 90 days while escrow clears?"